Monk Dawson, page 10
‘I don’t smoke,’ said Dawson. ‘Let’s watch television.’ Sally leant over and turned it on. They both stared at it — the regional news — and then she asked: ‘Well, what are you going to do, with your life, I mean?’
‘I thought you might have had some ideas.’
‘I don’t know. I mean you couldn’t do much that needs a long training, could you, like a doctor or an architect or anything like that?’
‘Not really.’
‘Have you any cash at all?’
‘About two hundred and fifty pounds.’
‘Well, that’s not bad. At least you can look around for a few weeks … but be careful of rent. We spent the first year in a flat, renting it, and it just wasn’t worth it. I mean you’re just there to watch telly and eat and sleep, aren’t you? We got this place on a mortgage.’
‘Is that cheaper?’
‘Not cheaper, no. But at least you’ve got something to show for it. It’s not much of a place. We could get another because I’m working again now, but Arnie’s not sure if he’s staying here or not.’
‘Might you move?’
‘He tried for a job in Birmingham but he didn’t get it. There aren’t many openings in his line of research. He’s had an offer from a big American company in Minnesota, if you know where that is. I don’t. Somewhere in the middle. They’d pay a lot but … I don’t know … they say that prices are much higher and Mum’d be left on her own: and there’s no knowing that we’d like it any better over there ….’
Sally smiled at him. Dawson felt a real affection for her. Their coming together again was surely the first benefit of his leaving the priesthood.
‘Is Arnie’s work important?’ he asked Sally. ‘Is he on to something, or what?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘I don’t really understand it and he never explains, you know. Very few scientific discoveries are dramatic, though, like penicillin. Arnie’s field is synthetics, which is why he came to the university up here. He thought he might interest some of the cloth people with his ideas: but they’re very conservative. The Americans are the only ones likely to find a commercial application.’
‘But he lives for his work, does he?’
Sally looked down at her skirt and said: ‘You must stop thinking of people as living for something. Most people live because that’s the way they find themselves.’
The television programme had changed but neither watched nor listened.
‘But you are happy, aren’t you?’ Dawson asked his sister.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, standing. ‘We’ve had some good times. You’d like some tea, wouldn’t you?’
Dawson studied his sister, her husband, her son, for the three days that he was there. They seemed always distracted from talking to each other and to him by the newspapers in the morning, television in the evening and, to judge by the paperbacks on their bedside table, by reading at night. When they went for a walk, they were distracted by the child: clothing him, carrying him, preventing him from running into puddles. The child was left at a nursery during the day when they worked, though Sally came back at three. She then withdrew into caring for Jamie, and Arnie withdrew into his work or into the political events of the day, which provoked disparaging remarks made with no expectation of a reply. The conversation between husband and wife was practical: let’s take Jamie for a walk before it rains: peas or carrots; there’s a Humphrey Bogart on Channel Two.
Dawson did not get on with his brother-in-law. Arnie thought, and said, that anyone who had ever been a Catholic priest, defrocked or not, was sort of soft-brained: and Dawson … well, instinctively, he still checked the more uncharitable of his trains of thought.
From a room in the Great Northern Hotel in London, Dawson started to look for a flat. Most of them were not only expensive, but required a deposit — ‘key money’ — or a lease. He had thought of paying five pounds a week, but soon realized that he would be lucky to find one for ten. After five days he found a place with two dark rooms besides a kitchen and bathroom. It was two miles up the Edgware road and cost nine pounds a week. The furniture was worn and stained by the many different people who had lived there before him. Dawson bought some sheets and a pillow-case of his own: a cup and saucer, a plate, two knives, a fork, a small pot and a frying-pan. He went out a second time to get a tea-pot, a spoon, some tea, milk, bread, butter, eggs, marmalade, salt, pepper, a frozen chicken and a tin of peas. That evening he cooked himself supper — the chicken fried in butter, the peas heated in the pan, bread butter and tea.
Next day, after breakfast, he went out to a public call-box and rang me at the paper. We made an appointment for lunch in two days’ time. He then took a bus down to Marble Arch and went for a walk in Hyde Park. He watched the other people who were there — many of them alone like himself. At one he went to a cafeteria and had a bowl of soup, and cod and chips. Then he fetched a cup of coffee and sat drinking it. Across the room, filled with secretaries and Oxford Street shoppers, young trainees and messenger boys, he saw another man eating alone, slowly and deliberately, but this man was badly dressed — almost a tramp — while Dawson knew that he was well-dressed in his grey suit and striped shirt.
In the afternoon he went to a film — an aesthetic treatment of an adulterous love affair. He came out of the cinema at five, bought two pork chops, some frozen carrots and a bag of potatoes. He took these back to his flat and cooked them. When he had finished his supper, he left the flat and went to the nearest pub and ordered a pint of beer. There were several other people there but Dawson was shy and did not appear open to conversation with a stranger. He drank the beer and went back to the flat. He started to read a novel, Anna Karenina, but found he was drowsy, so he went to bed.
I believe that I was the first person he can have talked to for any length of time since he had left his sister in Leeds. We met again at the Garrick Club: Dawson wore his grey suit and check shirt. He looked so ill-at-ease in these clothes that I immediately felt sorry for not having seen him before. I could have taken him to my tailor and advised him on shirts and ties.
‘How are you getting on?’ I asked.
‘I must say, it’s not easy,’ he said. ‘I feel as if I was fifteen or sixteen years old.’
‘Yes, a lot of … well … ex-priests evidently have a hard time. There’s some kind of organization …’
Dawson lifted his hand. ‘I know,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean for you. You won’t need anything like that. Once you’ve got something to do and know a few more people, it’ll all be easy enough. You’ll probably regret those days of peace and quiet. I find I don’t have the time to think of what I’m doing. I get carried in and out with the tide.’
Dawson chose the roast beef again: I myself had a salmon salad.
‘I hope you still want to come into journalism,’ I said.
‘Do you think I’d be able to do it?’
‘It’s quite clearly your vocation,’ I said.
Dawson smiled.
‘And I’ve a proposition,’ I went on.
‘You mustn’t feel responsible for me,’ he said. ‘I just wanted some advice, really.’
‘On the contrary. I expect you to be one of my most valuable assets — but wait and see what I’ve got to say because it isn’t much and you may turn it down flat. It’s an assistant editorship on a suburban newspaper, the Gazette in Beaconsfield. There’s an old editor there at the moment but he wants to move on. You could spend a month or two learning about it and then take over.’
‘That’s very good of you,’ said Dawson. ‘Are you sure they’d take me on?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine.’
‘I see.’
‘I still see you as a feature writer,’ I said, ‘doing the kind of thing you did before for us: but perhaps some experience of the administration of a paper like the Gazette would equip you better in an all-round way.’
The truth was that at that time I could not see any possibilities in feature writing that would make him a living. He undoubtedly had a talent for the kind of crusading article he had written before, but I imagined that their interest to the public came from his being a priest. In a short time I was to be proved quite wrong, but in somewhat special circumstances.
Dawson seemed worried by the thought of leaving London, having just found himself a flat: but I told him that he could easily commute to Beaconsfield. The paper was a weekly: it came out on Thursdays and he needed only to go down on the two days before it went to press.
After lunch we walked through Leicester Square to Piccadilly. His salary was to be eighteen hundred a year, which he seemed to think lavish, but I knew he had no real concept of the cost of living. He asked me where I bought my clothes and I told him, though I warned him off some of the more expensive places. We walked up Bond Street together. I had an appointment at three so we parted on the corner of Hanover Square.
As I have said, thirty-five pounds a week seemed to Dawson at the time to be a great deal of money: but tax and social security took eight of them, the rent and rates took ten or eleven more and the train fares to Beaconsfield, three on top of that. He did manage to live on it, however, buying some more clothes, a small gramophone and a ticket to the theatre every now and then.
His great problem, of course, was the lack of acquaintances on whom he could now call. All those he had known before had been Catholic and there is no loathing like that of a Catholic for a priest who has gone back on his vows. The people on the Gazette all lived in Beaconsfield: the editor did ask him home one evening, but Dawson found him dull and had to leave early to catch the last train back to London. Perhaps he expected more from me, though he told me later that he always thought that our friendship was something of an aberration in both of us.
For a time, then, he was as lonely as a layman as he had been as a priest: but he felt this loneliness more acutely because of the question of women. What protective inhibitions there had been in his mind when he had lived under the vow of chastity had now entirely left him and he reacted as any other man of his age to the tableaux of titillation and innuendo that he saw all around him in London. The advertisements for films, brassieres or beer showed pretty girls with their legs apart, their bosoms round like ostrich eggs. Novels, even Tolstoy, and music, even Mozart, seemed to exalt the joy of love and its physical expression. He felt the urgency of finding a mate, but how was he to do it? Friendless, inexperienced, how could he even enter the atmosphere around a woman in which flirtation could begin? When he took his clothes to the launderette, he saw girls, both young and pretty, but many of them were clearly married or attached. How was he to tell between those who were already in love and those who were available? He imagined that to make a mistake in such a situation would be so gross that even a yearning as acute as his could not justify the risk. He was not desperate just for the physical sensation of intercourse, for which he might have paid a prostitute, but for love, for loving words and affectionate gestures. He was not ambitious for a beautiful or intelligent woman: any decent girl would have contented him. But he was a hunter without licence or gun or any knowledge of traps and snares — and his only prospect was to catch a glimpse of his game scuttling around him.
I once asked him, rather insensitively, why he had not called the Carters. At that time, when the irony of this omission was very clear, he simply shrugged and said he did not know. I imagine that he thought he had so grossly wounded and offended Theresa Carter two years before that no friendship could be salvaged from the debris. Or perhaps he was ashamed to face the mother. In any case, the love he had in mind was something gentle and calm: not a tortured confrontation of extreme and painful emotion.
Chapter Eight
One morning in June, while dabbing his freshly shaven face with sweet, astringent lotion, Dawson was reminded of Jenny Stanten: and he decided that he would call her as she had invited him to do. Her number was in the directory, but he hesitated for two days before daring to telephone. He felt that she might have forgotten who he was, that she might be offended by his having left the Church, or that her husband might misinterpret his motives in asking to visit them. On the other hand, she might be able to introduce him to a circle of people and among them might be an available girl.
In the end, he took hold of himself and dialled the number given in the directory. It was eleven in the morning. A child’s voice answered.
‘May I speak to Mrs Stanten?’ he asked.
‘Who is it?’ the child asked.
‘Edward Dawson.’
There were sounds of movement from the telephone: a child climbing down from a chest or a chair, and then a shout for its mother and the giving of his name.
‘Well, hello,’ said the voice of Jenny Stanten.
‘You said I might call.’
‘I did indeed. When can you come and see us?’
‘Any time.’
‘Can you make it this evening?’
‘Certainly. That would be very nice.’
‘What about her husband?’ Dawson asked himself, as he stood at the door of the Stantens’ eighteenth-century house in Chelsea. The door was then opened by a tiny girl of five or six dressed in her night-gown. She did not say a word but toddled back into the house, proud to have turned the handle. Dawson followed and found himself in a room panelled in dark wood. This room acted as a hall. There were old macintoshes and Wellington boots up against the wall. He followed the little girl upstairs: she said nothing but concentrated on the climb and he on keeping step behind her. She led him into a large room which seemed to cover the whole of the first floor: its walls were white; there were bookcases, a Chinese screen, Rothkos, Persian rugs, a deep sofa, armchairs and small tables — everything beautiful in itself and in elegant disorder.
Jenny Stanten came in behind him — the mistress of this London house with its long windows. She was then only twenty-six or so, and was what one might call a fashionable beauty. Her features were gentle, uniform and calm. The blue of her eyes matched the blue of her long skirt: her skin was as pale as the cotton of her blouse. Her straight blonde hair framed an excellent work in the medium of shadow and mascara: and more powerful than her scent, Pinget’s ‘Fracas’, was her slim, nonchalant body and the warm, direct look that came from her eyes — glances which appealed and smiled and looked suddenly melancholy, all within the span of a minute.
Dawson had forgotten how lovely and graceful she was: when he had instructed her he had not noticed that kind of thing. He began to admire her now, from the moment she came into the room, but the moment of conscious enjoyment was short and was soon overtaken by so complete a feeling of pleasure in her presence that there was no margin in his feelings for detached appreciation. It was … well, schoolgirls have a phrase for it — love at first sight.
‘How nice of you to call,’ she said. ‘I’d rather given up hope.’
‘I didn’t know if I should or not,’ said Dawson, ‘now that I’m no longer …’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know all about that. What should I call you now? Mister Dawson?’ (Smile.)
‘Edward. It was my … original name.’
‘Edward. Fine. I hope I don’t slip up and call you Father Dawson.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Was it awful?’ she asked, pouring whisky on to ice in a large, polished glass.
‘What?’
‘Losing faith … leaving?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not so bad. It’s like growing up at last.’
‘At last,’ she repeated. ‘I can imagine.’
‘But one doesn’t regard one’s childhood as a waste of time, however long it lasts.’ Dawson took up the drink she had poured for him.
They both sat down on the deep, wide sofa. Jenny leaned back in one corner. Dawson crouched on the edge.
‘It was the time afterwards that was difficult,’ he said to this attentive, sympathetic girl beside him. ‘I was lonely as a priest … most priests are lonely — but now I’ve lost what friends I had.’
‘People are so intolerant,’ she said.
‘No. It’s only natural. A priest means a lot to them: they lean their uncertainties on him, and so, if he falls, they find it hard to keep standing.’
Dawson looked into his drink, drank some of it, then looked back at Jenny. ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘You said that your troubles were over.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly looking straight into his face. ‘My husband died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dawson said.
‘Don’t be sorry. I wasn’t.’
Dawson said nothing.
‘It was a car crash,’ she said, guessing at what he would not allow himself to think. ‘I was with him.’
‘Were you injured?’
‘Not badly. I am, as you see, intact.’ She smiled again.
‘That was lucky.’
‘Providential. I haven’t said a prayer since because I don’t know who did me the favour — Pan or Zeus or Neptune or Wotan or Christ or Mohammed ….’ She laughed.
Dawson sat back in the sofa and rested his head on a cushion. The alcohol seeping into his blood, he moved his eyes to the right and looked at Jenny — her long legs under the cotton of her skirt, her hair swept back behind her ear on the side of her head that faced him.
‘Or perhaps you put in a word for me?’ she asked.
‘It was my last prayer,’ he said and they both laughed. Jenny stood up and fetched the bottle of whisky. She poured more of it into their glasses.
‘That was nearly a year ago,’ she said. ‘Your dramatic event was more recent, wasn’t it?’
‘That morning — when we met in the shop — I’d just come from the cathedral.’
‘You did look bewildered.’
‘How did you find out … that I’d left?’
‘I heard — from Melanie Carter, as a matter of fact.’
‘Do you know her?’
